Hexacago is a suite of board games that explore economic, environmental, and epidemiological issues rooted in the city of Chicago. The board uses a grid of hexagons to represent regions and transportation lines. We are currently in the process of designing a series of games on the Hexacago board. In addition to designing games about health topics, we hope to develop a Hexacago toolkit to allow classrooms and organizations to repurpose the board and create games that deal with a wide range of systemic issues.  

The first completed Hexacago game is “Smoke Stacks,” which explores corporate tobacco media strategies. Players take the perspective of a tobacco executive who has the objective of acquiring a maximum number of customers and accumulating the most profit, even as the customers die in the process.

We hope to create game boards that encourage design in other cities. In November 2014, we tested our "Austogon" board in a game design workshop at the Practices of Play symposium at the University of Texas at Austin.